That
dog will hunt Steve Schlichting's Dandy Sandy
has a nose for coons

by
Jim McCarty

Steve and Sandy, also
known as “Grand Nite Champion Grand
Champion PR Banjos Dandy Sandy,” share some loving behind Steve’s
house on the banks of the Osage River. While Sandy is a loving dog,
on the hunt she is all business. In September she made Steve proud
by winning the prestigious Canadian Autumn Open Nite Hunt held in
Ontario.

On a moonlit night,
Steve Schlichting stops on a gravel road not far from his home at Taberville.
Where he stops open fields end at a small creek lined with majestic
oak trees.

Steve slips to the
back of his truck, where an aluminum box takes up most of the pickup’s
bed. He fits a battery-powered light to a hard hat and turns it on.
The brilliant yellow light overpowers the silvery moon and reveals
the eyes and nose of a coonhound patiently waiting for Steve to release
her from the box.

When Steve opens
the door, his dog, Sandy, is out with a rush. She jumps the barbed
wire fence and heads into the dark woods, on the track of the coon
both she and Steve know is in there.

The night grows silent,
save for the far-off whine of cars on the highway. Occasionally, the
rustle of leaves signals Sandy is at work. Steve lights a cigarette
and patiently waits for something to happen.

Suddenly, a deep
bass bawl, long and drawn out, echoes across the clearing. Seconds
later, another bawl sounds in a different place.

Sandy quarters the
field, searching, her nose pressed to the trail. Without warning,
her voice is heard again, this time sounding over and over again in
the ancient chop, a short, intense bark that means she has treed her
quarry. Sandy has found the coon and won’t give up until Steve
pulls her away from the tree.

“I can tell
you exactly what she’s
doing when she’s doing it,” Steve
says of his hunting companion, Sandy. “When she’s tracking,
when she starts to tree. I can tell you when she’s locating
up on a tree. Her bark is completely different.”

While Sandy
works the fields, Steve stays by his truck and enjoys the music
of the hound’s bark. “If the wind isn’t blowing,
you can hear a dog a mile or better. I can hear her two miles away,” he
says.

Sandy
is as quick to get into the truck as she is to get out when it’s
time to hunt. Steve’s dogs beg for a chance to hunt and
seem to really appreciate when they are chosen.

Most nights, Steve,
a member of Sac Osage Electric Co-op, will let his dogs tree two or
three coons and then head for home. He rarely shoots the coons, preferring
just to hunt for pleasure. Dogs can be run year-round, though the hunting
season runs from Nov. 15 to Feb. 15. For Steve and many others like
him, the thrill is the chase.

For centuries, man
has hunted with the help of hounds. This tradition is alive and well
in southwest Missouri where Steve and his wife, Sharon, call home.
On any given night, you can see lights flashing through the woods and
hear the distant bark of a hound tracking or treeing a coon.

Those too
old to hunt will often sit in their trucks with the windows down
just to hear the dogs at work.

“There’s
a hunt you can go to every weekend if you want to drive 70 or 80 miles,” Steve
says. These hunts are competitions that let hunters add titles like
grand champion or grand nite champion to the dog’s name.

Whenever Sandy is out of her kennel she is sniffing the ground,
ready for any sign of her archrival, the racoon. She is a Treeing
Walker hound.

Sandy’s
full name — Grand Champion Grand Nite Champion PR Banjo’s
Dandy Sandy — attests to her skills on the hunt. In
September, Steve and Sharon took Sandy to visit a friend
in Canada who had invited the couple to experience
a Canadian hunt. While in Ontario, Steve entered Sandy
in the Canadian Autumn Open.

“That friend
of mine, Murray Lapard, he’s a nice guy. He invited
me to go out hunting and see how big the coon are
up there,” Steve says. “We
hunted those soft maple swamps. And we treed tons
of coon up there.”

After four nights
of pleasure hunting, Sandy took her place in the competition. When
the hunts were all complete and the scores tallied, Sandy was the
overall winner.

“On six coons that first night and a possible
score of 1,350, she had 1,288. That’s the most points she’s
ever scored.”

The
win made Sandy, a Treeing Walker hound, the Canadian
Autumn Open champion.
“You’ve got to have a good guide and that guide we had that night,
he knew where the coon were at,” Steve
says of the Canadian hunt. “I
don’t think we ever spent more than 15
or 20 minutes at a drop before we had one treed
and were moving on to another spot.”

Steve
started hunting when he was around 10 years
old. He says some men from Carthage planted the bug
by taking him along on one of their hunts near Lamar,
where he grew up. “They learned right quick to come on a Friday or Saturday
night so I didn’t get in trouble with
my folks,” says Steve, who
would have let his grades suffer hunting on
a school night.

Gone
are the days when coonhunters took to the woods armed with little
more than a Coleman lantern or a carbide light. Modern coonhunters
have a variety of high-tech tools to help them keep track of
their dogs while on the hunt. Steve uses this radio direction
finder to tell where his dog is heading when it’s not barking. The dog’s
collar sends out a radio signal that is picked up by the receiver.

He begged his parents
for a dog, but didn’t get one until his parents
planted sweet corn one summer. “The
coons demolished it that year,” he
recalls. “So
I decided it was probably a good time to
hint about a coonhound. I was 13 or 14 when
I got a dog of my own.”

Since that time,
Steve’s almost always had a coonhound,
save for a stretch when he drove over-the-road
trucks for a living. During that period,
he sold or gave away his hounds because
he couldn’t give them the attention
they needed.

“If you have dogs, you
need to hunt them,” Steve says. “But
when I came off driving the truck, there
were guys I knew who had a dog, and I’d
go hunt with them.”
Over the years, Steve has had some good
dogs and some that weren’t good
for anything.

“A good dog
is worth a lot of money, and a worthless one ain’t
worth much,” Steve likes to say.

Once Sandy has found
the track of a coon she won’t give up.
Here she trees a coon found not far from Steve’s house near
Taberville.

Steve
says a good dog is one that can find
the coon’s trail, stay with
it and tree the coon, never leaving
the tree no matter what. “And
actually have a coon there,” he
adds. “A lot of them will
tree blank trees. They get in a
hurry. The coon might have gone
up it a ways and left. If they
don’t
check themselves, they’ll
get treed and not have it.”

Steve
bought a dog named Buck from
a man down in Arkansas. The dog had
a big bare spot on its hip. “I always thought a hog got hold of him down
in Arkansas,” Steve
says. “He made an exceptionally
good dog.”

Steve had another
dog he calls a “rig dog.” This
dog would stand on a little
platform Steve had built on
the passenger side of his truck.
As Steve drove down backroads,
the dog would sniff the air
for signs of a coon.

“He
would stand with his front
feet out there and his head
up, sniffing the air. When
he’d bark I’d
stop and he’d bail
out. He’d
strike anything, any varmint.
If it wasn’t a coon,
he’d hike his
leg and then get back in
the truck. That was a lot
of fun, just driving around
the country listening to
music and that old dog going
owoooo.”

Steve had one
Black and Tan hound and
one Bluetick, but the rest have
been Treeing Walkers like
Sandy. Of all his dogs,
he says Sandy may be the best
he’s
hunted with. Steve actually
sold Sandy when she was
a pup. Then he bought her
back without knowing firsthand
how well she could hunt.

“They
kept telling me how good
she was,” he says. “So
I bought a pig in a poke.
I just took another guy’s
word for it and I seldom
do that.”

Steve
says he’s turned
down several offers
for Sandy, knowing
she was worth far more
than that for the pups
she would bear.

Ranger, one of Dandy Sandy's pups, anxiously awaits his turn to
go hunting.

While
coonhunters and breeders
like Steve always
hope to get top dollar for
their pups, Steve’s
been known to give
pups away to young
people to help them
get started in the
sport. No doubt he
remembers his humble
beginnings and the
people who got him
started.

Most of the
time Steve hunts
alone, although
Sharon likes to go with
him if she can.
If he does have a companion
with him, chances
are it’s his granddaughter,
Christine. “If
she has her way,
she is going to
be a coonhunter,” Steve
says.

Christine,
who is 6, claims
half ownership
in another one
of Steve’s
dogs, Candy.
When Candy won
a best of breed
trophy, Christine
ended up with
the award to
display.

Steve’s
dogs love to
hunt, and when
he gets ready
to head to
the woods, they clamor
for his attention
in a way that
can only mean, “take
me.” His
Walkers are
affectionate
animals, often
wrapping their
front paws
around his
waist with
a loving thank
you for the
opportunity
to hunt.

Steve,
in turn,
is quick with
the praise
when his
dogs find their
quarry. It’s
hard to tell
whether man
or animal
enjoys the
hunt more.

“I
love to watch
a good dog
work,” Steve
says of coonhunting. “I
guess it’s
kind of addictive,
like people
playing golf,
people bowling
or playing
baseball.”